


Endless Moments 6: Destruction

by FayJay



Series: Endless Moments [6]
Category: Firefly, The Sandman
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-11
Updated: 2009-07-11
Packaged: 2017-10-02 10:34:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FayJay/pseuds/FayJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>River holds nothing back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Endless Moments 6: Destruction

She doesn't do it for fun – although it is fun, in its way. It's thrilling, exhilarating, makes her heart race fast faster fastest (stimulates the adrenal gland) and it's a _challenge_, that's the thing, because although they are stupid, they are many, so many, coming for her in ravenous waves. It's like grappling with numbers computer-fast; like pulling together pieces of a puzzle made from shards of broken glass and building something beautiful. It's a dance with too many partners, and none of them know the moves – but _she _knows. She can see the patterns that govern each blow, each lunge. She's smiling inside, light-hearted and joyous and free; potent now, not just potential. Unrestrained. Perfect. And the reavers keep coming, furious and frenzied and unreasoning, scrambling over their fallen kin, and so River need not hold anything back.

It's ironic, in its way, because it is only here, with these unpeople, that she can be unapologetically herself. As she darts and ducks and swerves and turns, as she punches and slices and severs and kicks, her movements precise and pure and lovely, calculated and efficient, she reflects upon how strange it is that she should be unable to share her bliss with the ones who love her. That it's only here, with these poor, wretched creatures of pure craving, that she can let her mind and body do what they have been built for. Only here, amongst people too damaged to recognise her own strangeness, that she can be as strong and as whole and as human as she knows she is.

She hates the ones who did this to her, of course, because she knows that in important ways she's broken. They gave her a new edge, honed away the corners and the layers that should be there, and now she doesn't fit properly in the place that should be hers. A broken puzzle piece. Now she doesn't say the right things, doesn't quite speak the same language as her brother or his friends. She upsets him. She _embarrasses_ him. Day by day, as he scrabbles around desperate to undo what was done, she breaks his heart. And River hates that so badly that she is sometimes racked with storms of helpless weeping, but she can't unknow the things she knows, can't remember how to be small and constrained, can't go back in time to become the little sister he remembers. She tries, though, for Simon's sake. She's always trying, always conscious of the weight of his fears and hopes. She tries to make herself small and unthreatening, and to pretend she is a normal girl.

No pretending here and now.

And although she is broken in those small, stupid ways, although she does not often remember how to play the social games, how to say unimportant things – this is what they gave her in exchange. She hates them, will probably always hate them, but she does not hate herself. She does not hate being able to keep her brother safe. She does not hate being able to hear and see and feel and move the way they have helped her to hear and see and feel and move. She does not hate becoming big. Powerful. And she has her freedom now – Simon bought her that - so she is not their tool. And she is strong in a way that she should never have been strong; she is something terrible, something glorious, something like a god, almost. An avatar, perhaps – although whose avatar, she does not want to know.

(But she thinks she knows, in spite of herself. Has seen his smile reflected, sometimes, in mirrors, has caught a glimpse of a man taller than Mal Reynolds, a man with red hair and a laugh that shakes the world. She thinks she shouldn't like him, but – he is honest, she knows. She appreciates that about him.)

Time passes. River Tam feels her limbs grow heavy, her muscles begin to ache, and her clothes are plastered tight against her skin with her own sweat and other people's blood, but she does not slow her pace, does not hesitate, does not flinch. She is spinning like a Sufi, her flesh an extension of her will, perfectly calm and lost in something like worship as she hacks order out of chaos, and keeps her brother safe. Keeps Kaylee and Mal and Zoe and even Jayne safe, because they have been protecting _her _all this time, and they are the only friends she has.

When the last one falls, River is shocked out of her trance by the sudden absence and she stands there for a long moment, statue-still, coming back to herself.

No more names on her dance card. Midnight. Time to turn back into a pumpkin.

“That's my girl,” murmurs a voice she knows, and she blinks up unsmiling at the red-haired man. He looks like a pirate on Earth-that-was. A storybook figure, larger than life and slightly sad. He looks nothing like the girl with the fish and the changeable hair, but River can still see the family resemblance. She knows about protective older brothers.

He reaches out to ruffle her sticky hair, and she lets him. “Give Del a kiss, when you see her next?” he says, and then he is gone, and River is left panting softly in the stillness while the dust settles and blood drips slowly down her blade.


End file.
